Rocco Rante, Louvre Museum

Fisher Bennett Hall, University of Pennsylvania

Rooom 224, 3340 Walnut Street

 

This presentation focuses on the evolution of settlements in the Bukhara Oasis resulting by the several transformations of the Zerafšan delta and the evolution of urbanism between the late Antiquity and the Islamic period, mostly concentering on habitat space evolution. The recent geo-archaeological researches directed under the aegis of the Louvre Museum brought to light the water changes of the Zerafšan delta since Neolithic to the Antiquity. These transformations generated changes in human behavior in terms of the occupation of territory as well as of the urban space. This development should be now imputed to the resulting landscape changes that generated a demographic increase and thus an exponential increase of settlements.

 

This lecture co-sponsored by Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, The Middle East Center, Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World, and History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania